Born in Eugene, Oregon on June 16, 1940; the son of Lester H. Goldschmidt and Annette Levin Goldschmidt. Goldschmidt married Margaret Wood 1965. The couple are the parents of two children, Rebecca and Joshua. After graduating from South Eugene High School, Goldschmidt was student body president at the University of Oregon where he received his B.A. in political science in 1963. He earned a law degree from the University of California's Boalt School of Law in 1967 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Portland in 1980. As a college student, GoIdschmidt was a choke-setter and loading dock worker during the summers between 1960 and 1963. In 1964 he was an intern in the Washington D.C. office of former U.S. Senator Maurine Neuberger of Oregon. In Washington. he was recruited by Allard Lowenstein for voter registration work in the Freedom Summer civil rights campaign in Mississippi in 1964. A legal aid attorney in Portland from 1967 to 1969, he began his political career as a city commissioner there from 1971 to 1973. A Democrat, Goldschmidt was the youngest mayor of a major U.S. city when he became mayor of Portland in 1973 at the age of 32. He served as mayor until 1979 when he was named U.S. Secretary of Transportation by President Jimmy Carter. He served in that capacity through January 1981, upon the accession of the Reagan administration. As secretary of transportation, Goldschmidt authored "U.S. Automobile Industry, 1980," a report to the president. At the close of the Carter years, Goldschmidt returned to Oregon where he joined Nike, the running shoe company based in Oregon. Working with Nike from 1981 through December 1985, he became head of its Canadian subsidiary, Nike Canada, in 1986. Goldschmidt has also served on the board of directors of Gelco Corp., Infocel Inc., Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, and National Semiconductor. In 1986 Goldschmidt entered the Oregon governor's race, which saw him and Republican Norma Paulus locked in one of the state's closest gubernatorial contests in modem times. Elected two times by big margins as Oregon Secretary of State in 1976 and 1984, Paulus was striving to become the state's first woman governor. The campaign was conducted against the backdrop of the state's continuing economic distress and high unemployment. Goldschmidt, campaigning under the cloud that Democrats had held the statehouse for only 10 of the previous 60 years, bluntly summarized that the race was "about jobs." He focused his campaign on a blueprint for Oregon's future, and stresed his role as an innovator while mayor of Portland in the 1970s. Hailed as a "public sector risk-taker in the entrepreneurial mold" by the Portland Oregonian, Goldschmidt was helped by his support from many businessmen and by his own business experience. He won the race over Paulus, 52 percent to 48 percent. Analysts attributed his victory to his economic program and to his record of cutting crime as mayor of Portland. Goldschmidt is regarded as a liberal because of his attitudes on cultural issues, a position welcomed in a state usually regarded as a culturally liberal one. In office, he has called for "an activist state role in the economy." He has been willing to place more emphasis on economic growth and a little less on environmental protection, a reversal of state policies of a decade ago when many state residents feared growth as a foreboding of "incipient California-zation." He has supported an end to school closings mandated by excessive property tax levies, claiming that his efforts to promote the state as a good place to live and do business are harmed by such closings. In the area of higher education, he wants to increase faculty salaries and to improve relations between the academic and business communities. Goldschmidt has received many awards and honors during his political career, including selection as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men in the United States by the National Jaycees in 1972, and identification as one of the "200 Faces of the Future" by Time magazine in 1974. In 1980 he received the International B'nai B'rith Sam Beber Award for Outstanding Leadership.
Bibliography: 1. Biographical information courtesy of governor's office; 2. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11-12-86; 3. Jaques Cattell Press, Who's Who in American Politics, 1985-1986 (New York, 1985); 4. Michael Barone et al., The Almanac of American Politics, 1988 (New York, 1987); 5. The New York Times: 10-19-86; 5-19-87.